Sunday, November 16, 2008

Media Week 46

What's going on in the Indian publishing market. 15% growth per year isn't bad. (Link):

When all sectors of industries seem to be getting affected by the ongoing recession in the world markets, the Indian book publishing market is going great guns. The book publishing market in India stands at approximately Rs 7,000 crore and is growing at a rate of over 15 per cent every year.

German media firms face the crunch but the biggest ones are sufficiently diversified. (Link):

Robin Meyer-Lucht, media thinker with the Berlin Institute, sees a silver lining in these economic storms. "The financial crisis is only the catalyst for the restructuring of the industry," he said to a recent media conference. It’s true. But this dark night with rain, snow, sleet and hail will pass slowly.

No need to visit your library if you live in Shelton, CT. they deliver. (Link)

Even if you can't transport yourself to a library, you can now have access to its materials thanks to a new homebound delivery service. Town libraries will soon kick off a pilot program to work out any problems in the system before making the service available throughout Shelton. Shawn Fields, branch director at Huntington Branch Library, said the service was conceived to help the elderly and disabled who might not be able to drive or walk to the libraries themselves.

In Davis's last year you can bet they are going to do there best to have a bang up year despite the economic downturn. Here they confirm their full year outlook. Reed may be insulated because of the vast subscription revenues they now rely on. If only they could get rid of Reed Business Information. Guardian:

The company, which has a range of business-to-business magazines, websites and exhibitions in the science, medical, business and legal sectors, told investors it was well placed to defy the gloomy economic outlook.

Reed Elsevier chief executive Crispin Davis said: "The business is on track for a very successful year and we expect to deliver Reed Elsevier's strongest constant currency earnings growth in over a decade.

"Whilst the economic environment is undoubtedly challenging, our businesses are more resilient than most and we are in a strong financial position."

Reed Elsevier announced a major restructuring programme in February 2008 and the publisher said today this was "progressing well". The company aims to build up to £100m in annual savings by 2011.

Also, Reed are looking to defer the refinance plan for the loan they needed for the ChoicePoint acquisition (Telegraph):

As credit markets come under increasing pressure and with Reed Elsevier's chief executive Sir Crispin Davis set to step down in March, the group is considering pushing back refinancing the $2bn loan until March 2010. By then, new chief executive Ian Smith, the former chief executive of housebuilder Taylor Woodrow, would have had his feet under the table for a year and the hope is that credit markets would have eased.

A clause in the terms of the first $2bn of the loan, which expires in March 2009, allows Reed to extend refinancing for one year. The second half of the loan, which is $2.175bn, is set to mature in 2011.

The idea for Blurb came in her time after Verb, when Gittins, a former Kodak executive, returned to her love of photography: she compiled a photographic essay about people in and around Silicon Valley. In 2003, she wanted to produce 40 copies as gifts. The quotes for publishing it were horrendous; not only that, but there was the huge delay in getting the printing scheduled. Which got her thinking. What if you created a company that would handle the printing using a print-on-demand model? You'd generate the book on your computer with some software, upload a file with all the relevant data, and it would be passed to the printing company, which could do a run of one, or 10, or 10,000. Later that year, Apple launched iPhoto, its photo organisation program - which also included a "design a photo book, get it printed by Kodak" element. Validated, Gittins saw a potential business.

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Michael Cairns

I enjoy discussing the publishing industry and in particular the changes that impact the business. On PND, I don't write about everything, just the things that interest me.

My career spans a wide range of publishing and information products, services and B2B categories and my operating and consulting experience has largely been with brand-name companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Macmillan, Inc., Berlitz International, AARP, R.R. Bowker and Wolters Kluwer.

I have served as a board member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and in addition to my responsibilities at R.R. Bowker, l also served as Chairman of the International ISBN Executive Committee.